


You Don't See Me

by paperclipbitch



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Pre-Het
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-02
Updated: 2012-06-02
Packaged: 2017-11-06 16:36:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/421002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/pseuds/paperclipbitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Years of this sort of thing have taught her discretion if nothing else.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Don't See Me

**Author's Note:**

> [first posted on LJ August 2009] This is really just a string of moments. Title is a Keane song.

_You’re moving with such irresistible speed  
You don’t see me._  
\- Keane

{i}

Tony’s music is obnoxiously loud and typically whiny as Pepper keys in this week’s security code and enters his basement sanctum. The clicking of her shoes on the floor is lost under the baseline and she plays the little game with herself where she sees how long it takes him to acknowledge her without her provoking a deliberate reaction.

Eventually, Tony seems to remember that the door slid open at one point, which means Pepper must have walked in, and turns. He waves a hand, and the volume drops.

“Morning,” he says.

“Good morning,” Pepper replies, with her practised bright smile, and holds out the tray she is holding. 

On it, there’s a _Stark Industries_ mug with a good, strong Columbian roast made just the way Tony likes it, and also a pair of black panties. Well, to call them panties would be kind of a stretch of imagination because what they really are is a scrap of black lace with some elastic threaded through somewhere along the line, but Pepper has already decided that she is _not judging_. She is very _deliberately_ not judging.

Tony takes the coffee with a vague nod of thanks, and then seems to register the panties. He looks at them for a long moment, and then looks at Pepper, and then looks back at the underwear again.

“Huh,” he says. “There are panties on your tray, you know. I’m not sure that’s hygienic.”

Pepper smiles blandly. “They’re a present,” she informs him.

Tony puts his coffee down on the nearest metal bench and then gingerly picks them up.

“I’m not sure they’re my size,” he says carefully, holding the miniscule lingerie up to the light. “They are my colour, though, so you haven’t failed completely.”

“They’re not from _me_ ,” Pepper replies, allowing herself a smile. “Don’t they look _slightly_ familiar?”

Tony gets a hunted look. “Should they?”

“Last night’s… guest wore them,” Pepper informs him. She wants to add: _the woman was only wearing her underwear and a really obvious beige coat and some pretty astonishing fuck-me shoes, how do you not remember?_ but years of this sort of thing have taught her discretion if nothing else.

“Oh.” Tony drops the panties back onto Pepper’s tray. “Yeah, right. Uh… whatshername.” He looks pleadingly at Pepper, as though she will somehow remember who the generic blonde that turned up in the middle of the night mostly naked was. Of course, names are pretty much optional in Tony Stark’s world; and he can’t expect Pepper to know these things _for_ him.

Of course, the fact that Pepper not only knows Tony’s booty call’s name, but also her date of birth, social security number and all her current contact telephone numbers is neither here nor there. Tony doesn’t need to know that she knows.

“Do you want to keep them?” Pepper asks, a teasing note entering her voice. 

“They’re kind of slutty,” Tony observes. “Rhodey would lose all respect for me if he saw me wearing them.”

“We could have a Hall of Panties,” Pepper suggests mildly. “Women are always leaving their underwear here; we could put them in glass display cases with discreet plaques or something.”

Tony smiles that crinkly smile that works far too well on everyone, and Pepper curls her toes in her stilettos.

“Go _away_ , Pepper,” he says, tone soft. 

She obeys, listening to him turn his music back up somewhere behind her. She throws the panties in the waste disposal.

{ii}

The job interview was a long time ago. By then, Tony Stark was infamous, not just because of his sheer _genius_ , but also because he got through secretaries at an alarmingly fast rate. On the day Pepper was due to be interviewed, there were five other women waiting outside Tony’s office with her. Two of them were blonde and perky and had slits in their skirts that left _very_ little to the imagination. Pepper very carefully did up the top button on her blouse. 

Tony was dapper looking and hadn’t grown the goatee thing yet. He also looked bored, though Pepper was reasonably certain that at least two of the other applicants had blown him in an attempt to get jobs – or, at least, to be able to say they’d become notches on Tony Stark’s bedpost (metaphorically, anyway, since there really weren’t any beds involved).

Pepper sat down opposite him with the manila file that contained her CV and references clenched in her lap.

“So,” Tony said, a slow, lazy drawl which implied that, gratuitous oral sex or not, today was being _really dull_ , “Your name is Pepper Potts.”

“Yes.” Pepper attempted a slight smile and inanely wondered whether she should have rolled over the top of her skirt in the bathroom, like she used to do at school an age ago.

Tony smirked back. “Your name is _Pepper_ Potts. Pepper _Potts_.”

Pepper shifted a little in her seat but didn’t break eye contact. “I’ve heard all the jokes,” she told him calmly. 

“I’m sure I could think of some more,” Tony suggested.

“Well, you’d need to spend more time around me,” Pepper told him, keeping a little smile pinned to her mouth.

Tony raised an eyebrow. “You’re hired.”

“You haven’t read my references yet,” Pepper told him, waving her file at him.

“I’m sure they’re fine,” Tony shrugged.

“You don’t know anything about me,” Pepper pointed out, and then became aware that she was protesting against getting hired, which hadn’t been her intention at all. She realised Tony had noticed her noticing this, and blushed.

“See you Monday morning,” he said.

She hasn’t gotten around to looking back yet, and it’s been quite a few years now.

{iii}

“We could import chocolate from Belgium or… Canada?” Tony is looking a little lost, pacing up and down with motor oil splashed all over his jeans. Pepper does her best not to wince; she’s going to be the one who will have to clean them, after all. “Where can we get good chocolate from?”

Pepper smoothes her skirt and picks a few imaginary bits of lint off her suit jacket until she feels calm again. 

“Can’t you do this with Jarvis?” she asks, and cleverly manages to make it sound not too pleading. “Or Rhodey?”

Tony rolls his eyes as though she’s just suggested the most _ridiculous_ thing _ever_. “Rhodey doesn’t like me today,” he explains wearily, in the tone he reserves for lesser mortals (in other words, people who _aren’t_ Tony Stark). “He says I have no integrity.” Tony, for want of a better word, _pouts_. “I have integrity, don’t I Pepper?”

Pepper considers the question for a moment. “You’re a very unique person, Mr Stark,” she manages eventually. “With many good points.” 

Tony narrows his eyes at her. “You’re trying to _placate_ me,” he accuses. 

“Why don’t we forego the chocolate altogether?” Pepper suggests, swiftly extricating herself from what will almost definitely degenerate into _childish_ bickering. “I mean, the woman is considering having a restraining order put on you, we don’t want to come in too strong.”

Pepper wonders helplessly when she became Tony’s Best Guy Friend alongside the list of other duties she has (Babysitter, Cleaner, Personal Assistant, Confidante, Go-To Girl and, perhaps most importantly, Bringer Of Coffee At Any Hour Of The Day Or Night), but dismisses that feeling because it leads nowhere good and _anyway_ , she hates it less than she’ll ever admit.

“I could write a sonnet,” Tony muses, wiping his oily hands on his jeans and smearing yet more unattractive gloopy substances on the denim. Pepper can already see the expression the dry cleaner will give her when she hands over the filthy Levi’s. 

“You’re not _fifteen_ ,” Pepper finds herself saying before she has time to think through the sentence properly. “Maybe we shouldn’t scare her off with bad poetry.”

Tony looks wounded. “You don’t know my poetry would be bad,” he protests, doing the pouting thing again.

“You’re a scientific genius,” Pepper tells him. She doesn’t add the second half of the sentence: _you cannot possibly be brilliant at everything_. Tony smiles at the word ‘genius’ and turns his attention back to the matter at hand: getting a woman who is definitely not interested to sleep with him. And somehow he has roped Pepper into this enterprise, either because she is incapable of saying _no_ to him, or because she’s realised the carnage might be slightly smaller if she’s helping out from the start.

“Well then, you will just have to go and talk to her,” Tony decides firmly. “And be very persuasive and charming.”

“Can’t you just sleep with someone _else_?” Pepper asks hopefully.

“No.” He’s acting like she’s missing something about this whole process, which is probably just as well because Pepper doesn’t have time to sleep with _everyone_ she meets – if only because _someone’s_ got to pick up the dry-cleaning. She should probably get laid more often than she does, though; it might make her less inclined to go along with Tony’s stalking schemes.

“Fine.” Pepper tucks a stray wisp of hair behind her ear. “You know,” she adds, “There’s something worryingly _Twelfth Night_ about this whole concept.”

Tony looks confused for a second, and then says: “Oh, _Shakespeare_.” It’s the same tone he uses when he says things like _oh, first names_ , and _oh, felonies_ ; accepting of the ideas but ultimately dismissive. Then, he adds: “Isn’t that the one with the lesbians?”

“Say any more and I’ll back out,” Pepper warns, smiling in spite of herself. Of course, where Tony is concerned, _nothing_ is sacred, not even great literature.

“Sure you don’t want to go and win her over in drag?” Tony enquires cheerfully.

Pepper rolls her eyes. “I can still hand in my notice…”

{iv}

“Let’s not have sex,” Pepper gasps.

Tony is drunk, possibly less drunk than her, possibly _not_ , but his metabolism is really very impressive. And Pepper thinks she shouldn’t have taken him up on the it’s-your-birthday-let’s-have-a-drink offer, because he’s still _Tony Stark_. Tony Stark with his face buried in her neck, laughing. There’s an impressively expensive bottle of wine spilling across the table, and three others which are empty.

Pepper knows that Jarvis is technically a computer but she still pictures some kind of British disapproving look emanating from him anyway.

“What?” Tony asks, then seems to realise that he’s slumped against her. He pushes himself upright with his hand pressed against her thigh in a way that’s reasonably inappropriate. 

“I’m still your employee,” Pepper provides, as much to remind herself as to remind him. Besides, sometimes she thinks he hasn’t quite noticed that she isn’t a robot like everyone else in the house. Tony’s mind is a scary place, after all.

“Right.” Tony blinks vaguely for a moment. “I should probably do something about that.”

“Are you going to fire me?” Pepper asks, voice surprisingly steady in spite of the _drunk_ thing. “Because this was _your_ idea.”

“I could offer you a raise,” Tony shrugs. He hasn’t moved very far and the heat from his body is bleeding through his shirt and into Pepper in a way that makes her distinctly uncertain. 

“I’m not a _prostitute_ ,” Pepper mumbles.

Tony looks at her for a moment, taking in her faintly dishevelled appearance.

“No,” he agrees. His smile widens. “You know, I think you’re the _first_ secretary I’ve had that hasn’t tried to sleep with me?”

Pepper sifts through the filecards in her drunken mind for a suitable response. “Oh,” she says. “Is that a bad thing?”

“It’s just interesting,” Tony tells her. His lopsided smile is ridiculously charming, and Pepper tries to ignore that fact.

“You find everything interesting,” Pepper mumbles, unsure exactly what she’s getting at.

“True,” Tony agrees, making an aborted attempt to get the rest of the wine off the table. He falls sideways instead, and Pepper finds herself with Tony draped across her. Again.

“Tony?” she asks uncertainly.

“I like your perfume, birthday girl,” he mumbles into her shoulder, breath warm against her skin.

Pepper doesn’t tell him it’s the same perfume she has been wearing for the last six years because, well, it’s not really relevant. A moment later, and Tony’s breathing slows and deepens.

“Oh please God, _tell_ me you’re not asleep,” Pepper says helplessly.

Tony doesn’t reply.

{v}

There’s no pinning Tony down to anything, no getting him to do anything or persuading him to give a definitive answer. Pepper is resigned to this by now, although she suspects she’s compromising more than she ever consciously meant to. Tony’s irritating like that; backing you into a corner just as you realise you can never do the same to him. It’s not even as though he has layers of untapped charm; just a crinkled smile and a sort of breathtaking arrogance that somehow becomes endearing from repeated exposure.

It’s possible that Pepper has some kind of tragic mental disease. Or that Tony is putting mind-control drugs in her coffee. It’s the sort of thing he _would_ do; and then, if you confronted him about it, he’d stare back at you with a _and what did_ I _do?_ sort of look, all confusion and kicked puppy.

Really, Pepper wishes she was enough of a bitch to blag her way in anywhere on _I work for Tony Stark_ ; then at least she’d get something better out of this. Not that she ever really has the time or the energy to go places that would require her talking her way in anyway. She has no life of her own, because she’s so busy trying to hold Tony’s together. And she wishes that she minded, although she also knows that if she _did_ mind it she’d be insane or at the very least unemployed by now.

The only things she ever gets out of _I work for Tony Stark_ are judgemental looks that cast dreadful aspersions on her virtue, and the occasional pitying smile. As if Pepper would still be working for Tony if she’d slept with him; everyone knows that he loses interest the moment the deal is clinched. And Pepper would like to say that she’s playing a game in order to keep her job and to keep Tony talking to her, but she knows that it’s really just that she doesn’t know where she stands and Tony won’t ever tell her.

“Jarvis,” she sighs in front of a mirror, tidying her hair and trying to work out just how irreparably her mascara is smudged, “Do you think I’m pretty?”

She’s aware that she sounds really desperate. There’s something unsettlingly _mirror, mirror on the wall_ about the question and whatever response she may or may not get, but she hasn’t slept in approaching thirty-six hours and it’s amazing how sleep deprivation takes away things like _caring_.

“I don’t think I am really in a position to answer that,” Jarvis responds blandly, although he sounds mildly amused and definitely far too judgemental for computer.

“No,” Pepper sighs, tucking a lock of hair into place. “I suppose not.”

She hears a burble of laughter behind her and turns too quickly; Tony looks dishevelled and has a streak of biro on his cheek that he hasn’t noticed. His hands are shoved in his pockets and he’s leaning against the door with an ease that Pepper doesn’t think she’s ever had, though it’s true that she spends most of her life with deliberate poise. 

“I think you’re pretty,” Tony offers lightly.

You can’t get anything out of Tony at all, but at times, if you don’t try too hard, he’ll surrender something. Pepper bites the inside of her lower lip, forces herself to inhale and exhale before she says anything at all.

“I wasn’t asking you.”

Tony laughs. “No,” he says, “You _weren’t_.”

Pepper pretends not to hear the deliberate italics and offers to make him some coffee, turning away to hide her smile.


End file.
